The Desperate Life Of A Flea Market Shammie Salesman

By Ben PopkenAugust 25, 2010

Reader Tim found himself selling shammies at flea markets to earn his way through college and made this video about it. These aren’t ShamWows, mind you. No, something more degrading. It’s the knockoff Wow!” brand shammie. Wholesale: $.70 per sheet, yours for only $3.30 a piece! He says it was like working at the “Bazaar of Despair.”

What degrading things have you done (or are currently doing) in order to make extra cash? Sound off in the comments.

Hmm, I don’t know. I used to work in fast food in high school and after watching this I think I would rather hang out in a flea market all day trying to hock shammies or some other useless product than smell and feel like a greasy french fry every day.

This is not always a good thing, at least not in the flea markets where I live. There are 3 types of people who go to the ones where I live- people who have 20″ rims on their 1988 Camry & who will SHOOT YOU for looking at them wrong, people who don’t speak english & make gross comments about every woman they see, assuming none of us speak THEIR language, and the potheads who crowd around the bong stands. The potheads are the only ones who I wouldn’t RUN from if confronted with alone.

Methinks you may have just dated yourself here. Since when did movie theatres actually put real butter on popcorn? I remember a time a few years back going to a movie and going up to the concession stand to get my wallet emptied…er…buy some popcorn.

“I’d like a medium popcorn and a medium Coke.”
“Would you like hydrolyzed canola oil on your popcorn?”
“Huh?”
“Butter.”
“No thanks, not the way you described it.”

I was at a state fair in NC watching a guy give a shammy demonstration, and they were cheap and useful-seeming enough that I bought a set. And then had to lug around the roll like a novelty hot dog the rest of the fair.

I have always been a fan of real chamois, because it is so greasy-smooth when wet. I purchased a scrap of it to use for wiping DVDs clean of fingerprints at my previous video rental job; it was much nicer than the microfiber glass wipe I also bought, though my coworkers preferred that. These shammy cloths are not nearly as fun.

(And yes, I got in the habit of checking and wiping DVDs when I rented them out, and when I checked them back in. Got tired of people returning a DVD within an hour of rental because it would not work … and the only problem was greasy fingerprints.)

Plasma donation during college. $15 per donation, up to 2 donations per week was allowed. Took less than an hour, if you didn’t have to wait for a chair. Bring your textbook and study while you give.

Half the people in my house would go at least once a month. The liquor store next door would cash the checks for free. I took the plunge the first time to make some money for a special weekend with my girlfriend. She found out, and started going too.

I did the medical test dummy thing a few times. Every time our med school had some kind of vendor fair or something, I would go and be the demonstration patient. I’ve had so many ultrasounds and MRIs done that if there was anything wrong with me, I would have known about it by now, what with several hundred doctors having looked at my scans.

I tried donating blood plasma one time in college. After 15 minutes of the “nurse” poking my arm trying to find a vein I was told to go home. By that time I was looking visibly ill from the process and they felt I would be a problem donor. Later my wife and would volunteer for testing for the pysch student experiments. $30 for 1 hour for sitting at a desk and answering some weird questions? Sign me up!

I tried donating blood plasma one time in college. After 15 minutes of the “nurse” poking my arm trying to find a vein I was told to go home. By that time I was looking visibly ill from the process and they felt I would be a problem donor. Later my wife and would volunteer for testing for the pysch student experiments. $30 for 1 hour for sitting at a desk and answering some weird questions? Sign me up!

Right. The way I have always understood it, you use “Chamois” when it is the actual skin of the actual Chamois Goat and “Shammy” if it is a cloth that has similar properties. It does not help that they sound the same, though.

I used to work at an Exxon gas station in a small South Texas town when I was 18 and let me tell you… IT WAS A S#1THOLE, Literally a S#1THOLE!!!

The hours were s#1tty, the pay was s#1tty and people treat you like s#1t and do unspeakable things in the restrooms… I don’t know why, but they would find the most “creative” ways to s#1t everywhere but in the toilet.

Guess who had to clean all that S#1T? Being the newest guy… me of course!!!
In summation, I would have gladly taken his job and a kick to the groin in exchange for mine!!!

I was working the night shift at a certain electronics/appliance big-box store. At close, we were cleaning up, and a coworker discovered someone had disposed of a dirty diaper by cramming it into one of the store fixtures. Being the newest guy, I got stuck with the cleanup job, but one of the in-store techs took pity on me and slipped me a set of long-nosed pliers to help me keep my distance.

I cleaned outhouses for the Forest Service (okay, they called them latrines). Unfortunately this was an area heavily frequented by Boy Scout Troops. You would not believe what a group of thirteen year olds could do to an outhouse. That alone would attract animals, so you might get really interesting combinations of human, porcupine, raccoon, mouse and bear shit all in a three by three space. I had an Indian pump (think really heavy metal backpack supersoaker), a shovel, and trash bags.

I have a rule – always work in business-to-business jobs where I deal with professional clients. Many years ago I briefly had a role where I spoke directly to customers (i.e. the general public). Never again.

Working at Geek Squad during college paid for expenses that my scholarships didn’t cover. Back then you actually had to have more than consumer level knowledge of computers in order to work there (at least in my store).

Same with Kirby vacuums. Fine product. Yes its expensive, but it should last forever. Unfortunately, they employ the sleaziest distribution method ever.

I really wonder why the folks running Cutco and Kirby don’t pursue a more mainstream method for selling their products? I mean there are vacuum stores that sell Oreck, why couldn’t they sell Kirby as well? Or set up a deal with Costco or something.

I’ve recently taken to buying stuff at the flea market and selling it to people either also at the flea market, or online.

That said, I see many of these people at the one big flea market near me. There is the Shammie sales guy, the miracle anti-fog stick person, the will clean anything cloth(miracle cloth, and they actually work), the amazing solution that cleans any carpet, the amazing faucet filter/head that makes your water more powerful by mixing it with oxygen(water with oxygen in it? I’m highly dubious of that claim), etc… I give them all credit.

Small town grocery store deli/coffee stand during college summers. Watching the obese guzzle down potato and macaroni salads by the gallons to wash them down with 44 oz. of soda was life ebbing. The walk-in freezer was my solace.

Do you have a blog? Or did you write an article for McSweeny’s recently? I just read something a few weeks ago written by a woman who suddenly realized that her freelance porn movie reviewing job had changed her outlook on life, and that she was grateful for friends who didn’t flinch when she related everyday events in life to porn. It was well-written, I just can’t for the life of me remember where I read it.

Urp, once I got a job working at a laundromat, doing Fluff and Fold. In other words, washing other peoples’ shirts/pants/underpants. I lasted two weeks before I caved. Just could not do it. Also I already had a full-time job and was just too tired.

The only thing worse than having this job is listening to him complain about how bad it is. Seriously – has he ever wanted to actually sell one of these things? Seems like he’s having more fun yapping non-stop about how stupid it all is. Kind of self-fulfilling, isn’t it?

For a short time during the mid-eighties, I worked the nightshift at the solo videocabins at the backalley of a sexshop near the trainstation. The work itself was easy, lots of time for textbook reading, actual just being around to prevent some monkeybusiness and changing bills to coins for feeding the videoplayers. At the end of the shift I had to clean the 6 or 8 cabins, but growing up in the countryside I was used to life and its odors.
What made me looking for an other job was the loneliness of the place. People (only men) sneaking in, pretenting, not to see you, rushing into the cabins, and afterwards hurring away. Rarely did I speak with someone.
The top was when one night a fellow student, who I know on a first name base, came in, went to a cabin, and later left, the whole time pretenting not recognizing me.
I dont know if you ever experiencend the atmosphere at the hallways of a brothel (here they are legal), well there the men are a 100 times more relaxed and sociabel.

I can top everyone. Years ago during a very desperate time in my life I took baby portraits at Kmart’s throughout Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina and Kentucky. I was rarely home and in the end got screwed out of most of my earnings, not by Kmart but by the vendor they used. I lived in cheap dismal motels and dealt all day with dismal people in dismal town’s looking for a deal on baby photo’s. The worst part was the pressure to up sell extras like frames and jewelery to go with the pictures. Those were very dark days but it did make me go back to school and get a marketable skill.

I highschool I sold candy in class for extra $$. At first I sold M&Ms as if I was part of whatever fundraising was going on in school at the time. Then I switched to selling blowpop lollypops. A bag of 100 pops was $5 at costco. Sold for 25 cents each, $20 profit per bag. I’d sell 2 bags a day, every day. Sure, I made all my money in quarters, but it was $200 a week and minimally extra effort. Still one of the best money making things I ever did.

(Second best was lifeguarding. Paid well to sit and watch people play. Occationally saw cute girls. Occationally saved someone’s life..)